GOLDEN, CO - Patients at five-star rated hospitals had a 72 percent lower risk of dying when compared with patients at one-star-rated hospitals, according to a new independent study by healthcare ratings organization HealthGrades.

Experts say this is an enormous gap that has held steady over the past years even as overall mortality rates have improved.

The "Thirteenth Annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America" study analyzed objective mortality and complication rates at all of the nation's 5,000 nonfederal hospitals using 40 million hospitalization records obtained from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services...